Music Video Targets Dysterís
Wanton Way of Spending

By Mike Hudson

November 11, 2014

A mildly amusing YouTube sendup of Mayor Paul Dyster has gone viral, Niagara Falls style, garnering all of 22 views in the days after it was posted.

Entitled simply “Mack the Knife Parody” and posted by someone named Pistol Pete, the video slightly changes the Berthold Brecht lyrics of the song made famous by Bobby Darin to poke fun at Dyster, whose policies and general demeanor have left him wide open to such japes.

“When that mayor, does his numbers, scarlet billows, start to spread,” the unnamed singer croons. “Fancy gloves though, wears that mayor, so he never shows us all that budget red.”

The City Council isn’t spared the somewhat droll observations either.

“One a sidewalk by Cedar Avenue, lies a Council just oozing life, someone’s sneaking round the corner, could that someone, be Paulie Dice?”

Not ready for prime time for sure but perhaps yet another indicator that the populace of Niagara Falls is starting to see that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.

Dyster has blown through more than $100 million in revenue from the Seneca Niagara Casino without creating a single permanent private sector job.

He is currently seeking a whopping tax increase to make ends meet, going to the taxpayer trough once again in what is already perhaps the highest taxed municipality in the entire United States.

His use of millions of dollars in public funding for programs as prosaic as the Hard Rock Café concert series, the disastrous Holiday Market and the ill considered Underground Railroad museum may be building into a perfect storm of fiscal irresponsibility unparalleled in the history of the city.

Dyster is certainly going to be seeking a third term as mayor in 2015, and perhaps the “Mack the Knife Parody” will be remembered as the first shot in what will become an increasingly virulent campaign to unseat him. For while he still has plenty of friends in Buffalo, Albany and even Washington, most of his enemies live and vote right here in the city he allegedly governs.